Big Brothers Never Listen.
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Sam frowned at his brother.
Dean alternated between bitching and smirking as he kept up a running commentary on the contents of the pile of ancient boxes stashed on the shelves in a far corner of the library; pulling out one strangely shaped object after the other.
"Dean, be careful handling those things!" Sam warned. "We've no clue what they're for. Remember what happened with the rabbit's foot!"
"Yeah, I remember!" Dean replied heatedly while examining the emerald-encrusted crucifix in his hand. "That bitch Bela swiped my winning scratch cards, not to mention the fact that she shot you, Sammy!"
"Right because that was the important thing!" Sam huffed."I was referring to the little fact that whoever touched the foot died! How do you know there isn't something dangerous in one of those boxes you're opening so carelessly?"
"Aw, come on Sam! Cut me some slack here. I know what I'm doing. If there was anything hexed in this pile of weird, it'd be secured in a curse box. I mean, you're not gonna tell me that your big-brained Men of Letters would overlook something important, are you?" he teased, placing the cross back in its container.
"Yeah, well maybe you're right," Sam admitted, slightly mollified by Dean's logic.
"I can't see them leaving dangerous stuff lying around, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be a bit more careful," he added as Dean ran his finger along a wicked looking dagger, only to yelp and stick his finger in his mouth to suck off the dribble of blood its sharp blade had provoked; causing Sam to scowl at him even more fiercely. "Dean!"
x
"Oh okay, mom! I'll be care..." but the words were left hovering in mid-air, causing Sam to look on horrified at his brother's collapsing body.
The sound of the chair crashing to the floor echoed through the large room as Sam vacated it like a bullet from a gun, his expressive face demonstrating the shock he had just received.
"Dean, oh god!... Dean!" he yelled, throwing himself down beside his brother and slipping a hand under his head to pull him up.
"Dean, can you hear me? Come on man. Open your eyes; talk to me!"
x
But try as he would, Dean's eyes remained closed and Sam trembled with fear as the memories of all the times he had held his big brother's dead body in his arms came back to haunt him.
Sobbing wildly he cursed them all; all the damned creatures in the damned universe, but in the emptiness of the library there was no-one to hear him.
He laid his head on his brother's chest where he was however comforted by the faint but steady beat of his heart.
Dean wasn't dead, and Sam felt his desperation lift a little; though try as he might, Dean's eyes stayed stubbornly closed, his body limp; but now that Sam's initial panic had worn off, he realized that Dean's state was more similar to that of a deep sleep.
x
He rushed into the bedroom and hurried back with a pillow which he slipped under his brother's head, preferring not to move him from where he had fallen, so that he could keep an eye on him as he investigated what had just happened.
Sam had been on edge while Dean had been fiddling with the boxes, his instincts crying out to him that it was dangerous, but as Dean had said, the Men of Letters wouldn't have been so stupid as to have left dangerous stuff lying around, would they? Only they had!
He procured a pair of kitchen tongs and gingerly picked up the dagger Dean had been handling before he fell to the floor. There was still a tiny spot of blood on the knife from where his imprudent brother had cut his finger, but to all intents and purposes it just seemed like a normal iron blade.
Sam crouched down beside his brother, studying him.
Nothing had changed. Dean just looked as if he was sleeping and from the quick movements of his eye-balls under their closed lids, he seemed to be dreaming.
X
The first thought that struck Dean as he took in his surroundings was how pissed Sam was going to be when he got his gigantor hands on him.
His brother had told him to be careful and now that something had happened, Sam would have enough 'I told you so' ammunition to shoot at him for the rest of their lives. Why do pain in the ass little brothers always have to be right?" he grumbled as he looked around.
At first Dean didn't recognise the room; no surprise there; it had been many years since he had been here, but as the sound of a baby's whimpering reached his ears, he understood the place he found himself was Sam's nursery, in their old house in Lawrence.
He walked over to the bed and looked down.
Sammy was lying there, his tiny fists waving about in the air. Dean could barely recall anything about the four years he spent in this house before his world crashed down around him, and he couldn't really remember much about baby Sammy either, other than holding him in his arms and running out of the house on that fateful night; but looking down at him now, Dean had to admit that his baby brother was the most adorable little dude he had ever seen.
"Hey there, Sammy," he whispered bending over the cot to get a better look at him. The baby didn't seem to have heard him though, his attention all concentrated on the mobile that hung above the bed.
Dean felt an overwhelming urge to pick the little guy up and just cuddle him but as he tried to grasp his brother, his hands went straight through his body, as if Dean was a ghost.
'Okay,' he grumbled 'A time-travelling, out-of-body experience. This crap was missing in my curriculum!"
Clearly he couldn't touch anything and Sammy hadn't responded to his voice,... so invisible too!
x
The baby's cooing made him look down again; his heart heavy for what he knew was in store for him. If he had been sent here in a physical form, he might just have taken the kid and fled the house, letting Sammy have a second chance at growing up safe and sound with him.
With all he knew, he could have kept the baby far from the supernatural, but as he tried again unsuccessfully to touch the child, he knew that wasn't an option.
x
Suddenly a dark shape appeared beside the cot and Dean froze.
He knew who it was; Azazel.
"Get away from him! Get away from my baby brother you hell-scum!" he shouted, frustrated that he could neither be seen nor heard, but trying anyway.
He watched in horror as the demon cut his hand and allowed the ruby-red drops to fall into baby Sammy's mouth; the child's tongue at first licking at them, then spitting them out with its drool, but the demon kept on patiently dripping the blood drop by drop into his mouth.
He heard the door open and saw his mother standing there in her white night-gown, her expression a mix of recognition and sorrow as she looked at the demon.
x
Dean was well aware of how it had all went down, of how his mom had made a deal with Azazel in exchange for John's resurrection, and this had been the price. His innocent little brother had been the one punished for other people's actions.
Although he loved his mom, in that precise second he felt a surge of hatred towards her for her selfishness.
If Mary had never made the deal, in time she would probably have found another boyfriend and he and Sam would never have been born; never have had to suffer hell, and you know what, he would have been okay with that and so would Sam.
x
He watched as his mom was slowly dragged up the wall to the ceiling, bursting into flames like a piece of dry kindling as the demon disappeared. He continued to watch as his dad burst into the room and took baby Sammy from his bed, placing him in his young self's puny arms and telling him to take Sam outside as fast as he could.
The the genesis of his need to protect and look out for his little brother began that night, in the precise moment Dad had put Sammy into his arms, and that's where he had remained, if not physically, then spiritually through all these years.
He continued to stand there unharmed as his mother's corpse burned to ashes and the room fell crashing down around him.
x
x
"Dean, Dean!" he heard Sam's panicked voice calling to him; felt his brother's hands painfully gripping his shoulders. "Dean are you okay?"
Dean open his eyes and got a faceful of Sam who was hovering over him like some gigantic insect.
"Get off, Sasquatch, before you smother me! I'm fine," he answered.
Sam reluctantly obeyed, crouching back on his haunches but not taking his eyes off his brother.
"So geek boy. What happened? " Dean asked, pulling himself up into a sitting position."I'm sure you've got some explanation lined up."
x
Now that Sam saw Dean was relatively unharmed, anger began to take the place of panic.
"Yes, I have Dean," he bitched. "You're an idiot. I told you to be careful and look what happened. You almost gave me a heart attack. I though you were dead!"
"Well stop bitching! I'm fine as you can see. So... I'm waiting to know what went down."
Sam huffed before launching into an explanation.
"From what I can theorize, the dagger is a normal one until it cuts somebody. A tiny particle of the 'magic' iron mixes with the blood in the wound provoking a deep sleep. As soon as I thought to wipe the remnant of your blood from the knife, you started to come round. It must be that the cut causes the sleep, and to wake up the infected person, all you have to do is wipe any residue from the blade.
Could be the men of letters didn't realise what it did as none of them were idiot enough to cut themselves on it," Sam concluded, rolling his eyes at his brother.
X
"What about you. Did you experience anything while you were out. It seemed as if you were dreaming. Were you?"
"You could say that," Dean agreed, rising to his feet. "Though it wasn't actually a dream. It was something that really happened, that quite honestly, I could have done without witnessing."
"Dean what did you see?" Sam asked curious.
"If you make me a real good cup of coffee I might be more willing to share. Being knocked into a deep sleep takes a lot out of a guy!"
Ten minutes later the brothers were sitting at the library table, steaming mugs of coffee in front of them; Sam's enquiring gaze fixed on his brother.
"I had a dream, vision, whatever, " Dean began. "Of the night the yellow-eyed demon came to call. I saw you in your cot, the sweetest little guy you could imagine. I tried to pick you up, to take you out of the room before the douche bag showed up but I was incorporeal. I couldn't touch you; so I got to watch, unable to do anything to stop him, as he dripped the blood onto your face and into your mouth..."
He looked over at Sam who was hanging on to his every word, and sighed.
"You were an innocent baby, Sam. You didn't deserve what they did to you."
At his brother's words, Sam's eyes took on the moist appearance they always did when he was upset.
"Then mom walked in, " Dean continued. "And I saw it all, her being dragged onto the ceiling and burning up. I saw the recognition on her face and I can hardly bring myself to say it, but I hated her in that moment for what she did to you, to all of us."
"Dean," Sam interrupted."She didn't know."
"There's no excuse, Sammy. She was a hunter and she made a deal with a demon. Even if she couldn't exactly predict that Azazel was coming for you, she had to know that no good could have come from what she did," Dean countered.
"Then Dad came in with me standing behind him in the doorway. He put you into my arms and told me to take you outside as fast as I could and that's what I did. Then the room crumbled all around me and I woke up with you hovering over me!"
x
"I'm sorry you had to see that Dean," Sam said regretfully. "The yellow-eyed demon made me go through it too when he had us at Cold Oak. Seeing mom go up in flames wasn't a pretty sight."
Dean sniffed, breathing heavily through his nose, then lifted his head to capture his brother's eyes.
"You know, Sam. When I saw you lying in your cot, so innocent and defenceless, all I wanted to do was pick you up and take you somewhere safe, away from all the crap that was going to come for you. I couldn't because I wasn't physically there but I swear to you that if it had been possible, I'd have walked straight out of that house without a second thought and let you have the life you deserved; and when you became that big-ass lawyer, I would have been there cheering you on."
x
"Dean," Sam exclaimed, moved beyond words by what his brother had just revealed. "You've nothing to regret. You've always been there for me, had my back. You sold your soul for me; kept on believing in me even when things were bad. I've never thanked you enough for all you've done for me. You remember after you killed the yellow-eyed demon, what I said to you. I told you there was nothing I wouldn't do for you, and that has never changed."
Dean nodded. These were the cards they had been dealt; nothing could change that now but as long as they were together, they would overcome whatever was still waiting for them!
X
The enD